CWA 1180 - Political Action

The battle for voting rights continues
by Arthur Cheliotes
November 2004

"If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election cycle," said Republican Michigan state legislator John Pappageorge earlier this year. Yes, in 2004, not 1964 before the Civil Rights Act and the voting Rights Act. Detroit, of course, is 80% black.

It was a rare moment of honesty for Republican officials, who have been busy all over the country trying to suppress votes, especially minority votes. Civil rights and legal experts warn that millions of Americans will be barred on November 2 from voting through legal barriers, faulty procedures and dirty tricks.

Over five million former felons—disproportionately African Americans—will be disenfranchised in this election. Nationwide, 13% of black men will be barred from voting this way. In some states, one in three black men are denied the vote because of past felony records.

Florida is one of those states. But as if that weren't bad enough, Florida is once again trying to throw tens of thousands of voters off the rolls with a faulty purge list. In 2000, thousands of blacks in Florida were kept from voting this way. This year, outrage and lawsuits have forced Florida to back off its purge list. But Jeb Bush is doing his best to keep Floridians from voting his brother out of office in other ways. State police officers have visited black neighborhood to "investigate" possible voter fraud.

The NAACP and People for the American Way (PFAW) have documented other efforts to intimidate voters. So-called "ballot security" teams go into minority neighborhoods and demand that voters produce identification even though it's not required. They take pictures and single out immigrants for scare tactics.

In Florida and elsewhere, officials have imposed rigid rules for registering to vote, invalidating thousands of voter registration forms for meaningless infractions. In Ohio, for instance, the secretary of state until recently was insisting that any registration form that came in on anything less than 80-pound paper stock had to be rejected.

These underhanded tactics and others like them are an assault on the fundamental right to vote of all Americans. They are being deliberately directed at minority voters, who are much more likely to vote Democratic, by Republican officials. They demand our outrage, as well as immediate action by state and federal officials. We must not allow history to repeat itself in this way.

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